“Whereas some of my contemporaries may be satisfied
to embrace aging gracefully as part of the cycle of life,
that is not my view. It may be ‘natural,’ but
I don’t see anything positive in losing my mental
agility, sensory acuity, physical limberness, sexual desire,
or any other human ability. I view disease and death at
any age as a calamity, as problems to be overcome.”
So writes Ray Kurzweil in this brave new handbook to the
human machine. […]

The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human
Intelligence,
by Ray Kurzweil

Penguin (Non-Classics)
Released: 01 January, 2000
ISBN: 0140282025

“Imagine
a world where the difference between man and machine blurs,
where the line between humanity and technology fades, and
where the soul and the silicon chip unite. This is not science
fiction. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray
Kurzweil, the “restless genius” […] and
inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology
of our era. In The Age of Spiritual Machines, the brains
behind the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the Kurzweil synthesizer,
advanced speech recognition, and other technologies devises
a framework for envisioning the next century. […]”

Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of
Strong A.I.,
by Ray Kurzweil

Publisher: Discovery Institute (June, 2002)
ISBN: 0963865439

In the
closing session of the 1998 Telecosm conference, hosted annually
by Gilder Publishing and Forbes at Lake Tahoe, inventor and
author Ray Kurzweil engaged a number of critics. He advocated
“Strong Artificial Intelligence” (AI), the claim
that a computational process sufficiently capable of altering
or organizing itself can produce “consciousness.”
The session had an unexpectedly profound impact, not least
because a number of important issues from technology to philosophy
converge on this one issue. In this volume, the Discovery
Institute, with the help of the contributors, has reproduced
and expanded upon that initial discussion.

The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life : How to Reduce Fat in
Your Diet and Eliminate Virtually All Risk of Heart Disease
and Cancer,by
Raymond Kurzweil

Publisher: Three Rivers Press (December 27, 1994)
ISBN: 0517883015

“Following
Raymond Kurzweil’s 10% solution, you reduce your fat
intake to 10 percent, exercise moderately but regularly, and
tailor your time to include relaxation and enjoyment. The
result: you eliminate virtually all risk of heart disease,
cancer, and a host of other life-threatening illnesses—and
lose weight in the bargain. […]”

“What
is artificial intelligence? At its essence, this is another
way of asking a central question that has been debated by
scientists, philosophers, and theologians for thousands of
years: How does the human brain—three pounds of “ordinary”
matter—give rise to thought? With this perspective in
mind, inventor and visionary computer scientist Raymond Kurzweil
probes the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence
from its earliest philosophical and mathematical roots through
today’s moving frontier to tantalizing glimpses of twenty-first-century
machines with superior intelligence and truly prodigious speed
and memory. […]”